Get Started
The installation-to-live-instance journey for Syncropel. Install the CLI, initialize your identity, start the daemon, bootstrap authentication, pair devices, and handle the failure modes you'll hit along the way.
This section takes you from "I just heard about Syncropel" to "I have a secure daemon running with a browser paired to it." It is intentionally more detailed than the Quickstart — read Quickstart if you want the 10-minute happy path; read this section if something went wrong on your first try, or if you're setting up a machine that will do real work.
Map
| # | Page | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Install | Download and install spl on Linux, Windows, or macOS. Pin versions. Verify. |
| 2 | First run | spl init, your identity, the ~/.syncro/ tree, and config.toml. |
| 3 | Starting the daemon | Three modes (dev, secure local, exposed), lifecycle commands, logs. |
| 4 | Service accounts and tokens | Bootstrap your first service account. Save the token. Flip to secure mode. |
| 5 | Pairing a browser or phone | QR pairing, manual pairing, revocation. |
| 6 | Exposing the daemon securely | Tailscale, reverse proxy with TLS, CORS, what not to do. |
| 7 | Troubleshooting | Diagnostic tree for the eight failure modes real users have hit. |
| 8 | Reset and uninstall | Clean reset, full uninstall per platform, what survives. |
| 9 | Windows notes | WSL gotchas, Defender, Firewall, PATH, long paths. |
| 10 | Linux and macOS notes | systemd, launchd, PATH, where logs live. |
Suggested reading order
First time installing. Start at Install, proceed through First run and Starting the daemon, stop at Service accounts and tokens — that page gets you to a working secure daemon. Everything after is situational.
Pairing a second device. Jump to Pairing.
Something is broken right now. Troubleshooting first, then Reset and uninstall if you need to start over.
Exposing to other machines. Exposing the daemon securely covers the three safe paths and the one you should never take.
What "Syncropel" means on your machine
spl is a single binary. Once installed, it is both the CLI (spl task list, spl intend …) and the server (spl serve --daemon). They communicate over a local Unix socket on Linux and macOS, and over TCP on Windows. The server persists everything it knows to ~/.syncro/hub.db, a SQLite file.
That's the whole system. No Docker required, no separate language runtime, no external database. The pages in this section are about getting that one binary installed correctly and pointing it at a well-formed ~/.syncro/ directory.
See also
- Quickstart — the 10-minute walkthrough
- Operator Runbook — day-2 operations once your daemon is doing real work
spl doctor— one-command diagnostic when a daemon is misbehaving